A new chemotherapy strategy seems to improve cure rates for children with rhabdomyosarcoma who are at high risk for cancer recurrence. In a randomized phase III clinical trial, adding 6 months of low-dose maintenance chemotherapy after initial treatment increased the 5-year overall survival rate...
Initial findings from a randomized phase III clinical trial showed that patients with advanced squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) benefit more from initial treatment with the programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)-targeted immunotherapy atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and chemotherapy than...
Researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of consecutive, prospectively molecularly profiled patients with advanced cancer who participated in a large, personalized medicine trial. They found that using molecular tests of tumors to select targeted therapy resulted in slower cancer growth and...
An analysis of pooled data from 9 randomized phase III trials of more than 8,000 men with advanced prostate cancer who received chemotherapy shows chances of survival are as good for black men as white men. The median survival was the same in black men and white men overall (21 months), but black...
Nationally regarded radiation oncologist Karen M. Winkfield, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Wheatley Heights, a suburban hamlet on Long Island, New York, that shares borders with the prosperous community of Dix Hills and one of the Island’s lowest-income towns, Wyandanch. “I was fortunate to live ...
India, with the world’s second-largest population and more than 2,000 ethnic groups, is a vastly complex nation, noted for its rich history and boundless intellectual capital, but also for its poverty and inequities in areas such as access to health care. The State of Kerala, situated in the...
Razelle Kurzrock, MD, regarded internationally for her work in translational science, was born and reared in Toronto, Canada. “My parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. My father, who was Jewish, was a Holocaust survivor. My parents put a strong emphasis on education,” she said. ‘The...
“At the age of 6, my mother threw me into the arms of Hippocrates’ discipline, giving me as a special gift a toy suitcase full of medical equipment and a little puppet to train my skills with a stethoscope, syringe, thermometer, small reflex hammer, and torch to explore the oropharyngeal airways....
The remarkable careers of Jimmie C. Holland, MD, and James F. Holland, MD, spanned collectively for more than a century, leaving an indelible footprint in oncology clinical care and research. Synonymous with cancer care itself, the Hollands were a living documentary of the rich and dramatic history ...
Internationally renowned expert on the early detection, prevention, and treatment of younger women with breast cancer, Nagi S. El Saghir, MD, FACP, FASCO, was born on January 5, 1953, in Bint Jbeil, a village in southern Lebanon. His parents moved to Beirut in 1948, at the height of the...
For this installment in the Living a Full Life series of articles, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed immunology pioneer James Allison, PhD, Chair of the Department of Immunology, the Vivian L. Smith Distinguished Chair in Immunology, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Research,...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Lorenzo Cohen, PhD, and Alison Jefferies, BA, MEd, summarize research...
During her presentation “Adolescent and Young Adult Survivorship: What Do We Still Need to Know?” at the 2017 Cancer Survivorship Symposium: Advancing Care and Research, Emily S. Tonorezos, MD, MPH, a general internist in the Adult Long-Term Follow-Up Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer...
Extended next-generation sequencing genomic profiling in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has revealed remarkable heterogeneity and molecular complexity of the disease and provided critical insights into the genetic mechanisms underpinning of preleukemic and leukemic pathogenesis.1,2 Despite...
A targeted therapy that has been effective in fighting ovarian cancer in women, including those with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, may also help patients with aggressive pancreatic cancer who harbor these mutations and have few or no other treatment options. An international team of researchers was...
Sir Murray F. Brennan, MD, FACS, was born on April 2, 1940, in Auckland, New Zealand, which lies on and around an isthmus surrounded by the sparkling azure waters of the Hauraki Gulf. “I was born at the beginning of World War II. Fortunately, my father was too old to be drafted into the army. I...
Nationally recognized oncologist Nancy L. Bartlett, MD, had an early love for mathematics and a swooning aversion to the sight of blood. “I was born and reared in Kansas City, Missouri and am a Midwesterner at heart. No one in the family was involved in medicine. My mom was an elementary school...
ASCO President-Elect Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FASCO, was born and reared in Wyoming, where her family ran a cattle ranch in the foothills of the snow-topped peaks of the Wind River Range (or “Winds” for short), a place of breathtakingly uncluttered vistas where the chief feature is the air...
The 2018 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting was abuzz with more than 22,000 attendees from around the world who came to Chicago to hear the latest in basic science and clinical trial results. Here we present summaries of a few of the highlights from the AACR meeting...
Children with nonbrainstem high-grade glioma could benefit from potentially life-extending treatment if genetic testing was used to personalize therapy as it is in many adults, new research published by Mackay et al in Cancer Cell reported. Scientists analyzed the DNA of children taking an...
The noninferiority phase III Persephone trial could shake up the standard of care for adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin), showing that patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer derived as much benefit from 6 months of trastuzumab as 12 months, according to research from the United Kingdom ...
Debiopharm International SA (Debiopharm) recently announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation to Debio 1347, an inhibitor of fibroblast growth factor receptors 1, 2, and 3 (FGFR1–3), for the treatment of patients with unresectable or...
The ASCO Annual Meeting is the world’s largest multidisciplinary oncology conference, attracting over 30,000 attendees each year. Countless advances are unveiled in Chicago year after year. The sense of excitement generated by knowing that clinical practice may change for the bettering of our...
Precision medicine is changing cancer care in profound ways. It is expected that the number of patients who benefit from precision medicine will continue to increase in the coming years, as treatments become more effective and research yields more insights on patient populations who are most likely ...
A MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL analysis of circulating tumor DNA extracted from the plasma of patients has shown that human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16) DNA is detectable in the majority of cases of favorable-risk HPV-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma and may be a clinically useful...
A RECENT article in The New England Journal of Medicine explored the nuances of minimal/measurable residual disease testing after induction treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML)1 and David P. Steensma, MD, and Benjamin L. Ebert, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical...
Dr. Shulman is Deputy Director, Clinical Services, and Director of the Center for Global Cancer Medicine, Abramson Cancer Center; and Professor of Medicine, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. IN 2008, WHEN ALLEN LICHTER, MD, FASCO, then Chief Executive Officer of ASCO,...
The latest news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about vaccination rates in the United States for human papillomavirus (HPV) is disappointing. It shows that in 2016, just 43.4% of adolescents (49.5% of females and 37.5% of males) were up-to-date with the recommended 3-dose HPV...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
A study by Mofidi et al in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene has estimated the total and per-case costs of newly diagnosed nonmelanoma skin cancers in Canada in 2011 caused by workplace sun exposure. Using a range of secondary sources, including official government records and...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus attention on chamomile ...
Overwhelming evidence shows that patient decision aids, such as educational booklets, videos, or Web-based tools that take into account patients’ values and personal preferences, hold enormous promise for improving the informed consent process. Patient decision aids both reduce unwanted medical...
In rapid succession, the SPARTAN study results were presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, the data were published in The New England Journal of Medicine,1 and the drug apalutamide -(Erleada) was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for men with previously...
Very small differences in the way a patient lies during radiotherapy treatment for lung or esophageal cancer can have an impact on survival, according to research presented at the European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology (ESTRO) 37 Conference (Abstract OC-0322). These differences of only a...
A simple test of handgrip strength may be a good indicator of short- and long-term survival in patients with stage I non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to new findings presented at the European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology (ESTRO) 37 Conference (Abstract PV0041)....
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Abutalib and Landgren review the underlying data that shaped the updated International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) diagnostic criteria for...
On April 12, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital launched the St. Jude Cloud, an online data-sharing and collaboration platform that provides researchers access to the world's largest public repository of pediatric cancer genomics data. Developed as a partnership among St. Jude,...
On April 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved osimertinib (Tagrisso) for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 19 deletions or exon 21 L858R mutations, as...
In a pilot study reported at the 2018 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting (Abstract CT079) and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Forde et al, neoadjuvant nivolumab therapy was found to be feasible and active in patients with resectable non–small cell lung...
Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) accounts for 14% of all lung cancers and is often rapidly resistant to chemotherapy, resulting in poor clinical outcomes. Treatment has changed little for decades, but a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center offers a potential explanation for...
I’ll admit it. When I was first asked if I would chair the Cancer Control for Primary Care (CCPC) Course in Bhutan, I immediately exclaimed yes... and then sheepishly went to look up where exactly Bhutan was on a map. For the uninitiated, Bhutan is a country nestled between India and Tibet in the...
ASCO is launching ASCO Practice Central, a new website that serves as an online information hub to help oncology professionals navigate a complicated and ever-changing practice environment while providing high-quality patient care. The first ASCO website dedicated to the business of oncology, ASCO...
Glioblastoma, a grade 4 astrocytoma, is the most common and most aggressive form of primary brain tumors in adults. The most recent guidance on molecular profiling, diagnostic and prognostic factors, and treatments for newly diagnosed and recurrent diseases was described in the Journal of Oncology ...
C. Kent Osborne, MD, Director of the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and moderator of a press conference where the EMBRACA findings were presented, shared his thoughts on the study. While a few months’ improvement in the risk of disease progression may seem...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) Distress Thermometer and Problem List for Patients have been around since 1999,1 and in 2015, the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer mandated routine distress screening at cancer centers.2 So how successful has the cancer community...
Initial findings from the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study showed that prototype sequencing assays tested in this analysis may facilitate the development of a highly specific blood test for early cancer detection, according to data presented at the American Association for Cancer...
In 2011 the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) group published its publicly funded study of three annual screening chest computed tomography (CT) scans among heavy smokers aged 55 to 74.1 The results remain the first and only screening study for any cancer demonstrating a...
How should clinicians position anti-HER2 agents and also incorporate endocrine therapies in the treatment of metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer? At the 2018 Miami Breast Cancer Conference, this question was explored by Sunil Verma, MD, Medical Director of the Tom Baker Cancer Center and...
Among patients with inoperable, advanced, or metastatic ALK-positive inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor, 50% were confirmed to have partial or complete tumor shrinkage after treatment with the ALK-targeted anticancer therapeutic agent crizotinib (Xalkori), according to data from the phase II EORTC...
Alectinib provides longer symptom improvement than crizotinib in <em>ALK</em>-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to results from the ALEX trial presented by Pérol et al at the European Lung Cancer Congress (ELCC) in Geneva, Switzerland (Abstract...